Me, Myself, and the Whole Damn World
by Marika
Summary: A short POV piece by Katie. Won't make any sense unless you've read 'My Dads'.


Me, Myself, and the Whole Damn World:   
  
Hello.   
  
This is so idiotic. This can't possibly help anything. But Julia suggested it, and she's the only one in the universe who might possibly understand some of what I'm feeling, so I'll do it, for her sake.   
  
All right, some background. My name is Katie Iria Winner, daughter of Quatre and Trowa Winner. I am now seventeen years old, four months, six days, 14 hours, 11 minutes and say... about 20 seconds old, although that's just an estimate. Twenty five now. That's if you're counting from my birth. If you're counting from when I was created... that would be exactly nine months to the second before that.   
  
I'm small for my age, very thin (people think I look emaciated most of the time), with white hair, gray eyes, and gray skin. Polite people say that I have pale blond hair, light blue eyes, and white skin, but they think the same thing as everyone else. I look like I'm about to keel over and die at any second. So what. I'm not, I'm as healthy as any of my parents.   
  
All five of them.   
  
By now you've probably figured out that there's something not right with me. That's probably the biggest understatement in the entire fucking world. The better question would be what is normal about me. And the answer: not very damn much. I'm the creation of a bunch of psychotic scientists whose idea of fun hobbies was playing God with people's lives. My life, specifically, mine and my sister's.   
  
This hasn't been easy on my fathers, either. And by fathers I mean Quatre and Trowa. They're the only ones that qualify as fathers, even if they all contributed genetic material. After all, when you're trying to create a perfect soldier, you use the best tools. And my parents were the best. They still would be, if it weren't for me and Julia.   
  
It's probably just luck that I'm the one who ended up with Quatre and Trowa, and that Julia ended up with Duo and Heero. Neither of them would have had any idea what was wrong with me. Quatre knew instantly, almost before I did. Not that he could do anything about it, not for the longest time. In fact, he just made the situation worse.   
  
Which is not, in any way, his fault. He couldn't help it anymore than he could stop breathing. He tried his best, he kept away from me all that he could, but it hurt him, which hurt me in return. I don't like hurting him. I don't like hurting either of them, they've both been through far too much pain.   
  
I'm named for two of their sisters. My middle name is one of Quatre's sisters, one who died back during the war, trying to protect him. I don't know why he saddled me with the name. Every time he hears it, he remembers her. Most often he remembers her death. And he has a good memory. It got to the point where if I had to see that fucking resource satellite blow up one more time, I thought I would go insane. Literally. So I started insisting that they not call me that. Dad was hurt, but it faded quickly, especially since I was so young and they thought it was just a phase. Hardly anyone knows it's my name anymore. Maybe, if he ever stops feeling guilty about her death, I'll use it again.   
  
My first name comes from Trowa's only sister, Catherine. She works at a circus, which is where she met Trowa, when he was looking for cover during the war. They both think that they just treat each other as family, that they adopted each other because they'd both lost their families through war. They don't know that they actually are brother and sister, reunited. It would be funny, maybe, if the entire situation wasn't so sad.   
  
I haven't told them yet. Maybe I never will. They have a good, healthy relationship now, and I don't want to change that. I... am not sure what it would do to them, if they knew. Maybe nothing. Maybe it would change everything.   
  
And how do I know this, you ask? How do I know all these secrets about my parents, some of which they don't even know themselves?   
  
Like I said before. I'm not normal. Those fucking psychos I mentioned before? Those are a bunch of scientists, the ones who originally built the Gundams (yeah, you heard right, Gundams). After the war was over, the ones who survived - it's a pity they all didn't die in the war - got bored. So they made us. Me and Julia.   
  
Sometimes I'm not sure who got the worse deal. Julia got most of the physical enhancements. Enhanced strength, stamina, hearing, eyesight... all five senses, actually, plus a few more. She's also brilliant beyond all belief. Her brain can actually operate as a functioning computer, if she ever wanted to do high-level mathematics for some reason. But beyond pure calculating ability, her memory retention is next to perfect, she sees connections between things at speeds that are absolutely unbelievable, and when she puts her mind to it, her observational and analytical skills are unmatched, anywhere. She even managed to figure out who our parents were on her own, after growing up believing that they were fairly normal. And if that doesn't sound tough to you, then you have no idea how the mind works, how difficult it is to break out of preconceived notions.   
  
Do I sound fairly knowledgeable about all of this? I should be. It's because of my 'enhancements'. I got all the same mental boosts as she did, so I would be just as smart, if I could get my brain to operate the way she does. But I can't. I'll never be able to keep up with her (not without spying on her mind), because far too much of my energy goes into making sure that I stay me.   
  
Not that she has it easy. I should have mentioned before, her gifts aren't much more 'gifts' than mine. She almost went crazy there for a while, when we were little, and I was also on the edge. I don't remember it myself, since I never saw her in that time, but I've seen it over and over again in different people's minds, not to mention that Julia's told me about it. I don't think I ever told her how much it means to me, that she went ahead and told me and didn't rely on me using my powers to pull the memory from her mind.   
  
People do that sometimes, after they find out my secret. They assume that I know everything about them. Quatre can project the thoughts he wants at me, so I don't mind it so much then, it's almost like just telling me, but when one of the maids comes into my room to clean and expects me to read her idiot mind to know that I should leave...   
  
She is no longer employed in the Winner mansion. Fucking bitch. She was afraid of me, too.   
  
But anyway, there's a limited amount of information that the brain is supposed to be able to process, and with all the stuff flowing into her mind through her enhanced senses, Julia was having one hell of a time with it. They designed us so that our minds could process a lot more than normal humans, but our intake capacity far exceeds our ability to process the information. There are safeguards, for both of us. I have shields, she can erect filters to block out some of the extraneous information. Of course, when the trouble started they didn't know this, and it was rough going. They made things even harder by not telling her the truth about why all that was happening to her. I know why they did it, but if it'd been me...   
  
Well, there's the point. It wasn't me, and things worked out OK for Julia. It's better now that she knows, though. And me...   
  
I've always known. There was no possible way that they could hide it from me. Even before I knew what the words meant, I knew what I was. My powers did not become fully active until I was about five, which is just as well, because if they'd been full upon me in infancy, when I was still in the custody of the psychos, I would have gone crazy. I know it. My powers were partially active then, and that was bad enough, being able to sense what they were feeling, thinking, while they experimented on the two of us. Almost as bad as when I could sense Julia's terror and pain when they took her off to begin her 'programming'.   
  
When the Preventers rescued us, and we were separated for the first time, I was terrified. Julia was not. When we were little, she never needed me the way I needed her. I could try to support and comfort her when she came back from one of the sessions with the fucking psychos, but that's about it. For me... she was the only thing keeping me sane, keeping me from losing myself in the minds of the people who'd created us. She was the only friendly presence there, and even though we were no longer among enemies by the time they separated us, I'd always associated being alone with the pain of losing myself. And to me, alone meant without her.   
  
I suppose I should explain what I mean by 'losing myself'. It's not a problem most people run into. Actually, it's not a problem that anyone runs into, anyone except for me. Sometimes people talk about going on retreats to 'find themselves' or some bullshit like that. They don't have the slightest clue what they're talking about.   
  
Losing yourself is not having a midlife crisis. It's not having some confusion about what you want to do with your life. It's not even having doubts about God or whatever other Higher Being you want to associate yourself with.  
  
Losing yourself is feeling other people's thoughts worm their way into your mind, until you can't tell their thoughts from your own. Losing yourself is waking up screaming from a nightmare where you watch your father die in a car accident in Atlanta, and knowing that your father isn't dead, and that you've never even been to Atlanta, and still being unable to fall back to sleep without the memory of how he kissed you on the cheek before he climbed into the car haunting you... Losing yourself is rolling over in the morning, taking stock, and realizing that you have more memories now than you did when you went to sleep, and knowing that some of them aren't yours, and despite all of that, being unable to tell which ones are yours and which ones belong to someone else. Losing yourself is feeling little bits of yourself chipped off, piece by piece, replaced by little bits of someone else, until there's so little left of you that you're nothing but a bunch of pieces of other pieces...  
  
I've been there. I was there for a long time - long enough for me to wonder if there was anything left of me by the time Quatre found the shielding that's now in my rooms, so that I can sleep. The worst part of it is that I'll never know, since there's no way to figure out how much of me is me and how much is a million other people.  
  
Anyway... Where was I? I got sidetracked. That happens to me a lot, symptom of my unique problems. It's hard to stay focused when a stray outside thought can completely change the paths that your thoughts flow. Most of the time I don't bother to try to focus, to keep my thoughts directed in one line, unless I'm talking to someone.  
  
But this is sort of like talking to someone. I may show this to Julia... one day, after I edit a lot of it out. There are things she doesn't need to know. She has enough problems of her own. But I need to try to keep focused here, a little. Where was I?  
  
Oh, yes, our separation. The first time was only for a few hours, when we were in different parts of the hospital. I was used to being separated for her that long, although it was always a relief when she came back. At least when she was near I could try to do something for her. And I needed her.  
  
I said that already. In any case, it was different when she came back this time. She wasn't upset. She wasn't happy, but she wasn't in pain or traumatized or anything like that. And the people around me felt different. I didn't understand it, and there were so many people that I couldn't even begin to think about it.   
  
The second separation lasted for months. These two odd men who were sad came and took me away from Julia, and this time, I didn't see her again for what seemed like forever. I hated them for that, for a while, until I started to feel odd things about the two men, especially the one with the light hair...  
  
I think that's enough of that. I love both my parents, but in different ways, and the relationship between any two people is too complicated to ever be written down, without even throwing in the issue of telepathy.   
  
I do love them, and I worry about them. They work very hard, and they worry about me so much. Sometimes I wonder if I'll be able to get any time off. My boss is pretty understanding, and I want to be there for my daughter when she's going through this. I know it's a simple operation, but it's the first time she's ever had to be in the hospital overnight and I know she'd feel safer if her mother was there. I'll ask Carl at the end of my shift if I can have a few days off. It'll be all right...(1)  
  
It's natural for parents to be worried about their children, and vice versa, but I think there's a little bit more of that in my relationship with my parents than is probably healthy. I can understand where they're coming from, without even having to look. I've never been that healthy (mentally), and especially after what happened last spring, they're worried about me. But while that wasn't fun, and I don't think that anyone wants to repeat it, it was, in some ways, a good experience for me.   
  
The fact that I did get through that with my mind intact, that I didn't fold under all of that, it's given me the confidence I needed to move forward, finally. I need to try to make it in the real world. I've got that stupid headband with the shielding so that I can rest while I sleep, and I've got my own shields. I can do this.   
  
Convincing yourself of something is easier than you'd think. People talk themselves into and out of all sorts of things they think are simple facts all the time, I've seen it. It's very funny, actually.  
  
There are just two little problems with this step towards independence. Quatre and Trowa. They're having some slight issues with my plans to test myself in the real world. All parents have trouble seeing their children grow up, after all, and... well, that's not the real issue here. I am going to do this. I just have to figure out how to convince them that they'd really be happier letting me do it.  
  
That's what this is all about. I'm having some trouble doing the convincing, and I was getting frustrated, so I talked to Julia about it.  
  
No, I didn't do it that way. Not to say that we can't. We can, and I talk to her that way once every couple of weeks, just to stay in practice, but it does take some effort and half the time she's in the middle of something. I used the phone. Yes, it is expensive to call Earth from L4, but Quatre does own most of this colony.  
  
I'm getting distracted again. Julia is the one who suggested this, as a way of calming myself so that I could talk to them again without wanting to smash their heads together, and...  
  
Excuse me. Julia's a little more direct than I am in her methods in dealing with overprotective parents, and her thought patterns are catching.  
  
And it has helped. I am calmer, and I think that I'm thinking a little more clearly now. I'm ready for another round with them. I am going to convince them. It's just a matter of time.  
  
I think that I'll show this to Julia sometime. I've spent so much time in her head, it would only be fair to let her see mine a little. But I think she'd like to see the fruits of her suggestion. I know she'll be happy to see me off of L4. She knows how important this is to me. It doesn't take a genius to make that connection.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Well there, you have it! This was a little harder to write than it seems, since to get into the mindset, every time I started writing again, I had to reread the whole thing, often several times, before I could start. This is a fairly pointless exercise in writing, lots of fun for me, but not really going anywhere.   
  
I meant to get this out a while ago, but then I had finals, followed by break. I thought I'd get a lot of writing done then, but I got sick, which culminated in me getting my gall bladder removed, so I lost a couple weeks there. Hopefully school won't be so busy that I can't get anything accomplished. I'm not sure if I'm going to keep working on 'The Others' or what, but I've had a lot of fun with this universe. Thanks for reading!  
  
  
1. This is probably confusing, so I'll explain it here. This is an unedited version of Katie's 'diary', before she had a chance to read it over and realize that she let someone's thoughts through her shield for a couple of seconds. That's not part of her monologue, but she didn't even notice it as she was writing. She'll pick it up on the editing run-through. If it doesn't seem to really fit with the rest, that's why. 


End file.
